Chleba: A Gauge for “Czechness”

There are Czechs and there are “Czechs”. If you want to distinguish a true blue Czech, you have to be in the lookout for their bread preferences. A true Czech will always look for Chleba. Chleba is a sour dough rye bread, dark in color and moist. It has a distinct unique taste to it that is very different from any other bread.

Through all those years that we have spent in the US, my husband never got satisfied with the kind of bread that was sold in the stores there. He was always saying that it is nothing like Chleba. Apparently, the same is true for some of the other Czechs that I know. My brother and sister in law, both Czechs, had to bake their own chleba from scratch when they lived in North Carolina. They missed it THAT much.

Well, I guess I know how it feels because in the many years that I lived outside of the Philippines, I still crave for rice. That is also our gauge for “Pinoy-ness.”

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11 thoughts on “Chleba: A Gauge for “Czechness””

Yes, Czech bread is really good. But it must be made in a traditional way (“kváskový chleba”), which means it must consist only of flours, salt, water and caraway. No yeast and no “Es” (éčka – urychlovače). It always amuses me when the composition on the package is long and takes several lines. That’s not a Czech bread then, the good, tasty, easy to digest, which doesn’t go mould.